For a long time, we struggled with finding toys that our son would like to play with in the tub. For some reason he isn't a fan of sitting down in the tub. This meant that we needed something that would entertain him enough to wash him down, while standing.
Since Christmas was right around the corner, I thought, what better time to look and get him something new.
Then I found this gem on amazon!
These aare pieces that, once wet, will stick to the sides of the tub, or the tub surround. Your little one can also build whinding roads, with stop signs and different vehicles.
We have had them for over a year now, and they haven't gotten moldy, or gross. My son still loves playing with them, and so does our 2-year-old daughter. They are seriously some of the best bath time entertainment out there. I highly recommend them.
I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
I feel that just like, many moms, we are struggling to stay on top of those everyday tasks.
One of those tasks being our budgets!
My family and I were living paycheck to paycheck and had no savings, until more recently!
I started going on youtube and searching all these different videos on how to budget, best ways to budget, step-by-step budgeting. I searched all the things to try to get us on a budget and to stop living paycheck to paycheck. Our biggest goal being to start putting money away so that, one day we could buy a house of our own.
I found a system that really grabbed my attention. The Budget Mom. You can find her on youtube, as well as her website. Thebudgetmom.com, where she has a free resource library.
Her steps are easy to follow and she is so positive and encouraging.
We have buckled down and started saving hard this past April. Started with 5 sinking funds that made sense for our family currently. We are tracking our spending and trying to narrow down problem areas in our budget.
Below I want to share with you some of the things that I purchased to help keep us organized and keep us productively reaching for our goals!
1. Budget envelope binder
This binder comes with several plastic reusable envelopes.
Two of which are perfect for putting coupons or gift cards in as they are divided.
The one in the link below is the one that I have. If lavender is not your color, don't worry you can find other colors on Amazon as well.
2. Zebra Mildliners
These markers! I can't describe how much I LOVE these for budgeting.
They are double sided, which makes them perfect for tracking your budget category expenses.
I assign each colour to it's own budget category. Then as I fill out my expense trackers, I highlight the transactions according to their colour. Helps for really honing in on where your money is going and where you spend the most.
3. Pocket Dividers
I purchased these pocket dividers to help organize the different parts of my budget.
I really like the fact they have the pockets, so that I don't have to hole punch pages I don't want to, like my savings trackers that I get to colour in to visually see progress.
But most of all they help divide the different sections of your budget that you want.
4. Binder
I purchased a binder like this to keep everything contained. It allows me to make my budget portable within my home. With two small kids, I have to be able to bring it with me between our main floor and our second floor. It allows me to work on my budget and keeping updated as much as possible, but also anywhere that my kids are playing.
5. Pens
You can use which ever pens you prefer, but below is a link to my favourite pens. I love how smooth they write. They are a medium point which I definietly prefer.
Well, these are my favourite basics for budgeting.
If you would like to know more about my budgeting process, leave a comment about what you would like to know. I will do my best to answer your questions. I can only comment on what has been working for my family. What we do might not be for everyone, but it may help to steer your in the right direction.
Thanks for reading!
I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
I am about to share with you my holy grail, ride or die, diaper rash cream.
My son and daughter go through phases where they randomly get diaper rashes, sometimes pretty bad.
After trying many different creams, this one was the one that was, seriously, a miracle cream. Apply it at the first sign of a rash, and you will see a huge improvement quickly.
I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
I have decided that I am going to share my favorite baby products. I will share one a week.
I know we are already almost done this week, but I can't recommend this toddler cup enough! It is the Munchkin 360 cup!
Super easy to clean, fun colors, easy for kids to use, and only three pieces!
My kids are 2 and 3 and absolutely love them. They are easy for them to hold, but even if your little one still needs handles on their cups, the Munchkin 360 cups are also available with handles!
Make sure to check them out!
This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission. Thank you for your support!
Welcome and thank you so much for coming back to read more about my momma-hood journey.
Today is all about the labor and delivery of our little guy. His early arrival came fast and it was like a whirlwind.
So, we made it through Thanksgiving (Canadian), and on Wednesday to follow I was induced around dinner time. I then was sent home to have everything run its course. If I was to go into active labor overnight I was obviously to head into the hospital, but if nothing progressed I was to arrive back at the hospital at around 9 O'clock Thursday morning.
Labor for me did not progress overnight, I was dilated to 4cm from the Foley Catheter by about 11 PM on Wednesday. Nothing progressed past that overnight. So in the morning, after getting very little sleep, I called Labor and Delivery to check in with my OB. We arrived at the hospital right around 9 AM and got hooked up to all the things, IV, Pitocin, the monitors, all the things.
Around 10, my doctor came in to check me and I was still only at a 4. She broke my water to see if that would help move things along. Contractions were fairly painful after about one hour of being at the hospital. I was trying to rest between them, but then the contractions got fairly painful.
Although I was having really painful contractions, things weren't progressing past a 4. so even though I was only 4cm dilated, I got my epidural. Everything continued like normal. I was checked however often. until about 4 or 4:30 PM.
At that time my doctor came in with a game plan. Since I wasn't progressing past 4cm and we had already talked about the potential need for a c-section because I was only 37weeks and 6 days and he was very small due to the restrictions with our situation of the two-vessel cord.
The game plan was that if at 5 PM I was still not past a 4, we would prep and do a c-section. As you can probably guess I never went past a 4. We prepped and had a c-section
At 5:37 PM on October 12, 2017, we heard, "Aw he is a tiny little peanut!"
The nurses quickly told the doctor that we didn't know the gender.
"I mean CONGRATULATIONS! IT'S A BOY!!!!!" our doctor quickly announced.
We laughed!
Our little guy was exactly that, little. 5 pounds, 2 ounces.
Thank you for reading in our labor and delivery story of our now three-year-old bundle of smart and silly boy.
Thank you for coming back to read more about my momma-hood journey.
*Possible Trigger Warning*
My husband and I were so excited about our twenty-week ultrasound. The baby is starting to look so much more like a little human. If we wanted to, we could also request to know the sex of the baby.
Since this was my first baby, I was able to talk my husband into not knowing the sex of the baby until they were born. He agreed, even though he wanted to know the gender so we could better prepare.
But during the anatomy scan, all was great or so we thought. I had an appointment booked with my OB for a day or so after the scan to go over the ultrasound, so I wasn't worried.
I go to my appointment with my OB, accompanied by my mother-in-law. We go through the routine, blood pressure, measurements, heartbeat the routine questions. Then we sit and talk about the ultrasound.
"Your baby has a 2-vessel cord. Which means that your baby's umbilical cord only has one artery and one vein."
I was confused and not exactly sure what it meant. Thankfully my doctor was super amazing and informed me that at that time there wasn't anything to be concerned about. The baby was growing properly and looked healthy. We just had to monitor the baby more frequently and do a couple non-stress tests.
I had more ultrasounds than my OB normally has her patients have. And more appointments with her to go over the results of scans. At 35 weeks we had a goal to keep monitoring super close to try to keep the baby in until at least 37 weeks.
I had ultrasounds about once a week at this point just to check the growth of our little bean. At 36 weeks we were leading up to Thanksgiving (Canadian) and my OB said that there was a good chance that we may have to deliver the baby by Thanksgiving. The 2-vessel cord had started to show its presence when our little bean was slowing down in growth. We did one more ultrasound that week and discussed that it was safe to wait a little bit longer. Over the weekend I would then reach my 37th week of pregnancy. I was booked for another ultrasound on Tuesday and an appointment with my OB for Wednesday late morning.
I walked into my OB appointment with my mom and mother-in-law and we went over the ultrasound from the previous day. It showed that the baby's body was where it was supposed to be, but that the baby's head was growing a little behind.
My amazing OB then consulted with fellow OB's with me and it was decided that I would go to the hospital only hours after the appointment to be induced with a Foley Catheter and sent home for the night until 9am the next morning or I was in active labor.
Thursday, October 12, 2017, Our son was born healthy via c-section.
The story of the induction and how it went from the time I was induced until the birth of our baby boy will be coming soon!
But first I wanted to give a quick explanation of what is a 2-vessel cord and the complications that can come with that diagnosis.
A two-vessel cord is where the baby's umbilical cord has one artery and one vein, instead of two arteries and one vein.
Some women are at higher risk than others when it comes to a two-vessel cord.
being a white person
being older than age 40
being pregnant with a girl
having a history of diabetes or high blood sugar episodes during pregnancy
pregnant with multiple babies, like twins or triplets
taking medications known to affect fetal growth, like phenytoin
But these risks don't mean that it is 100% that a woman will have a two-vessel cord pregnancy.
Pregnancies with a two-vessel cord are at greater risk for birth defects.
I will link a website below that helped me understand more of what a two-vessel cord is, how it is diagnosed, risks, possible complications, and more.
For some women, a two-vessel cord diagnosis doesn’t cause any noticeable difference in their pregnancy.
My husband and I got married in the summer of 2015, and we knew that we were wanting to try to grow our family fairly soon after. We didn't know exactly when we wanted to but we weren't timing it or anything. We were just following the if it happens, it happens method.
It was now January of 2016. It was a brand new year only months into being married and we were excited to think that we were expecting, but all tests came back negative. BUMMER! So we waited it out and February came along and I still hadn't had a period. So there I was taking another couple of home pregnancy tests (HPT), negative. By this point, I was just waiting to have my first doctor's appointment with my new family doctor. Which would be on the first of March.
My new doctor sent me for a bunch of bloodwork to figure out what was going on. Within a few days, my doctor called and asked me to come in for a follow-up appointment. Turns out I had hypothyroidism that had gone undetected for some time.
The next step was to get me on thyroid medication that would help me start to get things on track. My doctor had said if we don't get on top of the issue right then, that I may not ever be able to have children.
Finally in January of 2017 had my first period in just over a year. I was super excited because that meant that things were looking up and we could start planning to grow our family again. But in February I didn't get my period again and I took an HPT but it was negative, so we thought maybe my thyroid just needed a bit more time to correct itself.
Well, along came March, and still no cycle. But for the last week in February and the first week of March, I felt under the weather, but I didn't think anything of it because at the time there was a nasty stomach bug going through work.
My husband and I were on a date night the weekend before he was to take my bonus son to a youth conference for the first couple of days of spring break. We were talking about all the different things and somehow got on the topic of our dog, Scout. He had all of a sudden became very overprotective of me and constantly would be glued to me when I was home.
I had never really thought anything of it because our dog was always so affectionate and loved to cuddle, so I thought that maybe he just felt lonely when I was at work and tried to soak up more time with me when I was home.
Anyways, I went on to tell my husband that I thought it was a little strange because after I noticed our dog doing this I read some article that was talking about how dogs become super clingy when their owners are either really sick or pregnant. I told my husband that I must be really sick for our dog to be that clingy.
My husband was the brains in this situation and said, "Well do you have any symptoms for pregnancy?"
I said, "Not that I have noticed. I just felt under the weather and not myself for the past couple of weeks, but there is this stomach bug going around work right now."
Needless to say, we stopped on our way home and got some more HPTs. He wanted me to take one as soon as we got home, so I started reading the instructions and it said that morning is the best time to take it. As much as my husband wanted me to take one that night, I held out until morning.
I woke up the next morning, which was a Saturday morning, and took one of the tests. I wasn't expecting anything to come of it because in my mind I just had a stomach bug. After the longest three minutes I have ever waited, IT WAS POSITIVE! I was shocked!
I waited a little longer in the bathroom because I was convinced my eyes were playing tricks on me. I re-read the instructions and what a positive test looked like and put the instructions and test side by side a couple times.
When I had come to grips with the fact that the test was for sure positive, I walked into our bedroom and passed the test and instructions to my husband.
"I don't know how to read these things!"
"That is why I gave you the instructions too."
"NO WAY! REALLY? Go take the other one."
Sure enough, the second test came back positive as well. We were in shock and couldn't believe it. My husband actually went out and bought a digital pregnancy test, that he made me take that evening.
Pregnant 2-3 weeks, is what the screen said. So we planned to go to the urgent care clinic the following morning to get the confirmation from a doctor and figure out what to do next.
The doctor at the urgent care clinic laughed at us taking three tests at home and said well you better believe it. He handed us a couple weeks' worth of prenatal vitamins and start working on researching OB/GYNs in our area.
It was a huge blessing and answer to prayer. We had wanted a baby for so long and it felt near impossible until it happened for us!
Hope you enjoyed reading my journey to pregnancy!
Linked below are the prenatal vitamins that I used throughout both of my pregnancies. I can not recommend them enough!
*Disclaimer* This post does contain an affiliate link. I may receive a small commission through your use of my link.
My name is Courtney and I have been thinking that parenting can be really hard sometimes. It doesn't matter how much of a blessing we see parenting is, we have our hard days. Sometimes we just need a little bit of encouragement, or to read other parenting "horror" stories to help us realize we are not alone.
That is kind of why I chose to step out on this platform and create a community of the Momma-Hood. To share tips and tricks that I have learned in just 3 short years of being a mom to little ones. I by no means, claim to be perfect in my parenting. I also do not claim that my way of parenting is the only way. I just hope that maybe, just maybe some fellow Momma-Hood survivors out there read the posts I will make and get a good laugh, encouragement, or advice to survive their Momma-Hood journey!
I just want to thank you in advance for coming over and reading my posts!
*DISCLAIMER* Some posts may contain affiliate links where I may receive a small commission.
